Law Commons^™

Affh And The Challenge Of Reparations In The Administrative State, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

America’s summer of racial reckoning has led to increased attention on proposals to provide reparations to Black Americans.

Reparations discussions typically concern securing compensation for slavery. The racial harm caused by the administrative state is generally less of a focus, even though racial exclusions and discrimination in 20th-century administrative programs helped shape contemporary disparities in housing, wealth, and opportunity that endure today. A provision of federal housing law provides a window into the roots of racial harm enacted through administrative state programs, as well as the limits of administrative law as a tool for repairing this harm.